


Baggage

by Bluebluebaby



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 11:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6003451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluebluebaby/pseuds/Bluebluebaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study on Det. Barnett, filling in some blanks from the show. Canon-compliant until chapter thirty-three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baggage

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about these two... So many that I wrote my first fanfic since an SVU parody I did in 8th grade with my twin sister. One-shot, depending on where in the world the actual show goes.

Susanna Barnett had done stupid things because of pretty girls many times in her life.

There was the time in first grade where she took the fall for Emma Freeman's caricature of Mrs. Butz, because Emma had freckles on her nose and she smelled like strawberries. Susanna could have spared herself a spanking when she got home by coming clean, but she somehow knew even at the age of 6 that the truth would anger her mother and step-father more than Emma's base humor.

Then there was Junior prom, where she accepted a date from Spencer Roberts, a Senior football player who planned to study binge drinking at 'Bama in the fall. Spencer had halitosis and spoke his monosyllables inches from her face, but he was best friends with Ryan Petrie, who was going steady with Erica Smith, her crush since they were lab partners in Sophomore Chemistry. Evading Spencer's burger-breath was a small price to pay for hearing Erica laugh all night and helping her zip up the back of her dress before they posed for photos. For once in her life, her step-father's involvement in the church proved helpful that night, and she managed to reject Spencer's overtures without having to break his fingers in the process by invoking her “purity pledge.”

One might have thought coming out would have erased the endless self-sabotage and foolishness that plagued Susanna’s younger years. And in the ten years since declaring “ _I’m a goddamn lesbian_!” when her mother pestered her on the progress of her MRS degree, she had had 3 serious girlfriends and 1 unsatisfactory hookup, all handled with grace and maturity. Sure, Lisa the gender studies grad student had told her she would “die alone with nothing but the comfort of her patriarchy-enforcing career” but after a few months, she'd even managed to bury that hatchet and arranged the permits for that year’s Take Back The Night March. She had _great_ boundaries. Yet here she was, standing outside the apartment of Luisa Alver, compromising not one, but two criminal investigations dating back thirty years and fifty bodies.

  
Shame on her.  
_

  
Shame is a second language in the South. Right after learning her alphabet and times tables, Susanna learned that good girls keep their legs together, homosexuals burn in hell, and kids whose daddies leave are unloveable and deserved to be abandoned. When Susanna's father left them, she saw the way shame turned her vibrant mother into a faded wisp who walked the aisles of the grocery store like a ghost, unacknowledged by the masses. So when Deacon Ferrell Wood took a shine to her mother, Susanna ignored the sick feeling in her stomach his patronizing smiles gave her, because her mama looked like herself again on his arm, bright and shining and beautiful. Mama, who only sang hymns if they were listening to the radio and she forgot to change the station, started taking Susanna to the Free Will Baptist Church every Sunday and Wednesday. Susanna hated the taste of grape juice, but she liked to watch the pretty soloist in the choir, and she won prizes in Sunday school for memorizing the most bible   
verses. When she reached puberty and started dreaming about kissing that soloist (among other things-her subconscious knew enough to fill in the gaps from a rural Alabama sex education) she learned to shift her focus when the preacher ranted about "sins of the flesh" in order to keep from burning deep red in self-recognition.

Luisa behaved as if the idea of shame had never even occurred to her. It was _ridiculous_. And enthralling. From her initial tasteless flirtations, to attempts at phone sex on the office line, Luisa was unperturbed by the threat of being seen or heard. It didn't even turn her on, for chrissakes! Susanna had made a lot of progress from her fundamentalist upbringing, but Luisa was the holy grail of sex-without-hang ups. She asked for exactly what she wanted (unless she demanded it, when she felt like borrowing Susanna’s handcuffs) and received it enthusiastically, like orgasms were her birthright. The sex was, in a word, transformative. She recalled from a study she had read that oxytocin creates more favorable social judgments and feelings of altruism in the female brain. So, it could have been just the sex that made her so foolish (half-true, at least.)

She thought of David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, Sodom and Gomorrah.

_

  
Det. Barnett had received her first commendation as a uniform during her second year with the TPD, for her involvement in a meth bust assisting with the county sheriff’s department. The second was awarded six months ago for her “integrity and honor” in pursuing an internal affairs case that got half her department suspended for consistently overlooking the criminal activities of Alabama football players. She was not well-liked in Tuscaloosa (“I hope you rot in hell, you blonde dyke bitch,” one pastor wrote her), so when the captain offered her the transfer to Miami based on her solid police work and “downright bland” personality she jumped at the chance. She noticed a betting pool on the blackboard for how long it would take her to get eaten by a gator while she was packing up her desk.

Boxy blazers aside, Barnett knew that as a blonde with a strong twang in her voice she would be dismissed and ignored. She had quickly learned to play male chauvinism to her advantage, and as “progressive” as Cordero might think himself to be, she saw the way his eyes bugged out when she bounded into the precinct. She hoped it wouldn't be as easy as it looked to entrap him- Miami was pretty nice; she could stand to hang out here a while.

The secret to lying successfully was using the truth. Barnett sold her initial enthusiasm because she sure as hell was excited to be working a case that didn't involve frat boy vandalism. She could pull off innocence because she went by the book 100% (she also had said book memorized front to back, for the record). She could coax memories out of Luisa by sharing her own, very real ones. But when Luisa called her on her manipulation, the rest of the lies began to crumble, too. It was really only so long she could pass off her nerves as stress over “the case” until Michael discovered her for a rat. And a hypocrite. She kind of missed hate mail right now.

True photographic memory generally results in lower functional intelligence, an inability to differentiate between things remembered for importance and relevance. Barnett was rounding up when she shared this fact about herself (she had a very high functional intelligence _thankyouverymuch_ ). Her memory was not innate, but born of heartbreak and desperation. When the sound of her father’s voice faded and his face blurred in her mind’s eye, she resolved to never again forget anything that might some day be gone. She remembered the size of every catfish she ever caught, the name of every collar she ever made, and now, each interaction she had ever had with Luisa Alver.

************

“What made you decide to be a doctor?”

(They were basking in that post-coital afterglow where everything feels safe, even if two wanted drug lords could kill you with a snap of their fingers.)

“I wanted to help people. Isn't that what everyone says? My shaman helped me realize I got into obstetrics to reclaim the lost time I had with my mother. Of course that was after I lost my license, so…”

Susanna doesn't say “I'm sorry.” Mistakes have prices, and after all, she's in the business of collecting on those debts.

“Why did you become a police officer?”

“ _I wanted to help people_.” She feels Luisa’s unencumbered laugh against her chest. Then silence, as they both feel her deflecting the real answer.

  
“I wanted to punish men who do bad things and think they can get away with it.”

  
(She should have said “people.” But that wouldn't have been 100% truthful, and, oxytocin, remember?) Luisa senses her tension and throws a lifeline.

  
“Oh, so women get off easy, hmmmm?” That goddamn smirk will be the death of her.

  
“No,” she rolls over and kisses that spot behind Luisa’s ear, exaggerating her own drawl.  
 _“I make them work for it.”_

(For the first time in her life, she hears the words “Oh, Susannah!” Without wanting to punch someone in the throat.)   
_

For a skilled lie detector, Susanna was doing remarkably well at fooling herself. She was convinced that the subtle touches and kind smiles she had been giving Luisa were all motivated by Cordero’s plan to use Luisa’s crush to their advantage. Then, Luisa kissed her, and she used those good boundaries she was so proud of, and got the hell out of that situation.  
Then, she lay awake all night thinking about Luisa’s eyes, and how good she smelled, and how she just had really bad luck and never actually committed any crimes and isn't even related to Mutter so sleeping with her wouldn't be that bad would it? And then it was morning, and Cordero made a joke about how she must have been with her “girlfriend” all night and she decided that if she was going to deal with this shit she might as well actually have the benefits of human connection. Besides, Michael couldn't actually believe that she would reciprocate Luisa’s affections, the absurdity of it sent him into fits of giggles. (Men constantly underestimated women. )

Her hands shook as she dialed the number she had discreetly copied from the case files.

“Luisa? It's Detective Barnett.”  
“Is this something about my case? look, I know you were just trying to do your job and I read too much into it and I'm sorry for overstepping.”  
“Actually, I'm calling from my private cell-”  
“Ha! I knew it! You are into me!”  
“You just said-”  
“I was giving you an easy out, Detective.”  
“You can call me Susanna. Off the clock.”  
“Yes, officer.” She could _hear_ Luisa’s exaggerated wink. “Oh! Do you still have a uniform?”  
“Seriously?”  
“Fine, we’ll get to that later. Yes, I'm free tonight, you know where to find me, anytime after seven is good.” Luisa hung up, and Barnett slumped against the wall and closed her eyes. _Please let this be worth it._  
_

  
Susanna said seven words the first time she hooked up with Luisa. They were “hi.” “Yes.” “ _there_.” “ ** _Fuck_**.” (Repeated sixteen times), and “I’ll call you,” uttered as she extricated herself from the tangle of sheets and snuck out of the hotel under darkness. They could talk (or not talk, as it were) more later.

Pastor Johnson had taught her purity pledge class that sexual attraction and love were fundamentally incompatible. “When you hold a man’s hand and he makes your heart beat faster and he makes you feel giddy and excited, walk away from this man. He is not the man for you. If you hold a man’s hand and he makes you feel warm, safe, and secure, hold onto him. This is the man you are going to marry.” (When Susanna held Spencer’s hand she felt like throwing up in her mouth.) The inferno that was Luisa Alver’s libido burned Susanna’s brain into believing that she was just scratching an itch to make her time in Miami pass easier.

But when she spent her entire day off (the first in 6 weeks) at Luisa’s, making biscuits and gravy from scratch because Luisa had never had them before and that was a _sin_ , she couldn't really believe that any more.

“Do you think I'm crazy?”

The plates were scattered on the coffee table, and Luisa and Susanna were sprawled across the floor. That rug burn would be a bitch to explain tomorrow.

_I think you are stronger than anyone gives you credit for._  
I think there is no one else quite like you on this godforsaken planet.   
I think crazy is a word men use when they want to hurt women.

“I think you're doing the best you can under very difficult circumstances.”

_I think I might already love you._

Crazy, indeed.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (The quote from the pastor was stolen from a Facebook meme... Credit where it's due and all that. Thanks for reading!)


End file.
